Hiroshige 53 Stations of the Tokaido Reisho

By Cristina Berna and Eric Thomsen

The reader may already be acquainted with the Hoeidō edition (1833-34) of The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō. This was the most popular print series ever made in Japan.

Hiroshige did two other editions, the Kyōka edition (abt 1838) and the Reisho (abt 1840) which is the focus in this book. We include thumbnails from the two other editions for comparison. It is a total view!

There were 53 post stations along this important road, apart from the start and terminus, in all 55 prints, which are all here in the order from Edo to Kyoto. The reader experiences the same journey with a completely different set of prints and can compare to the Reisho, Hoeidō and Kyōka editions. For details on the prints in the Hoeidō and Kyōka editions see author's books on these editions.

It is possible to travel the same road today and some villages are still looking quite like they did back then.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Missys Clan
• Release date: Apr 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223327455

Cristina Berna

Cristina Berna liebt das Fotografieren und Schreiben. Sie schreibt, um ein vielfältiges Publikum zu unterhalten.

Book preview

About the authors

Cristina Berna loves photographing and writing. She also creates designs and advice on fashion and styling.

Eric Thomsen has published in science, economics and law, created exhibitions and arranged concerts.

Also by the authors:

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Outpets

Deer in Dyrehaven – Outpets in Denmark

Florida Outpets

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Christmas

Christmas Nativity – Spain

Christmas Nativities Luxembourg Trier

Christmas Nativity Hallstatt

Christmas Nativity Salzburg

Christmas Nativity Slovenia

Christmas Market Innsbruck

Christmas Market Vienna

Christmas Market Salzburg

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Christmas Market Malaga

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Missy’s Clan

Missy’s Clan – The Beginning

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Missy’s Clan – Education

Missy’s Clan – Kittens

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Vehicles

Copenhagen vehicles – and a trip to Sweden

Construction vehicles picture book

Trains

Contact the authors

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Published by www.missysclan.net  

Cover picture: No 19: 18th station: Ejiri-juku,  53 Stations of the Tōkaidō: Reisho edition

Inside: No 51: 50th station: Minakuchi-juku.  53 Stations of the Tōkaidō: Reisho edition

Introduction

The reader may already be acquainted with the Hoeidō edition (1833-34) of The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō. This was the most popular print series ever made in Japan.

Hiroshige did two other editions, the Kyōka edition (abt 1838) and the Reisho (abt 1840) which is the focus in this book. We include thumbnails from the two other editions for comparison. It is a total view!

There were 53 post stations along this important road, apart from the start and terminus, in all 55 prints, which are all here in the order from Edo to Kyoto. The reader experiences the same journey with a completely different set of prints and can compare to the Reisho, Hoeidō and Kyōka editions. For details on the prints in the Hoeidō and Kyōka editions see author’s books on these editions.

It is possible to travel the same road today and some villages are still looking quite like they did back then.

Cristina and Eric

Utagawa Hiroshige

Utagawa Hiroshige (in Japanese: 歌川 広重), also called Andō Hiroshige (in Japanese: 安藤 広重;), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. He was born 1797 and died 12 October 1858.

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica. The term ukiyo-e (浮世絵) translates as "picture[s] of the floating world".

Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format landscape series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, which is the subject of this book, and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

The main subjects of his work are considered atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose focus was more on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868).

The Edo period was a period with strong feudal control by the Tokugawa shogunate, with stability and economic growth, very closed to outside influence, although methods were imported and applied and a flowering cultural and artistic life.

The popular series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai (ISBN 9781956215243) was a strong influence on Hiroshige's choice of subject. Hiroshige's approach is more poetic and ambient, much more detailed, than Hokusai's bolder, more formal, poetic and focused prints.

Where Hokusai gives you an immediate experience just from looking at his prints, with Hiroshige you have to look more carefully, devote more time, to decipher the details and the meaning.

Subtle use of color was essential in Hiroshige's prints, often printed with multiple impressions in the same area and with extensive use of bokashi (color gradation), both of which were rather labor-intes.

Futami Bay in Ise Province

27_-_Futami_Bay.jpg

Thirty-six Views, print 27: Futami Bay in Ise Province, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji 1858 ISBN 9781956215236

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For scholars and collectors, Hiroshige's death marked the beginning of a rapid decline in the ukiyo-e genre, especially in the face of the westernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

The Meiji Restoration followed in 1868 after Commodore Matthew C Perry had forced Japan to open its ports to foreign trade in 1853. It meant an end to the shogunate, the feudal ruling system, restored the powers to the emperor who centralized government and industrialization.

Hiroshige's work came to have a marked influence on Western painting towards the close of the 19th century as a part of the trend in Japonism.

Western artists, such as Manet and Monet, collected and closely studied Hiroshige's compositions. Vincent van Gogh even went so far as to paint copies of two of Hiroshige's prints from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Hiroshige was born in 1797 in the Yayosu Quay section of the Yaesu area in Edo (modern Tokyo). He was of a samurai background, and is the great-grandson of Tanaka Tokuemon, who held a position of power under the Tsugaru clan in the northern province of Mutsu.

Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Brooklyn_Museum_-_Wind_Blown_Grass_Across_the_Moon_-_Utagawa_Hiroshige_%28Ando%29.jpg/220px-Brooklyn_Museum_-_Wind_Blown_Grass_Across_the_Moon_-_Utagawa_Hiroshige_%28Ando%29.jpg

Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon – by Hiroshige

Hiroshige studied under Toyohiro of the Utagawa school of artists. Hiroshige's grandfather, Mitsuemon, was an archery instructor who worked under the name Sairyūken.

Returning Sails at Tsukuda 

Returning Sails at Tsukuda, from Eight Views of Edo, Utagawa Toyohiro between 1802 and 1828, Brooklyn Museum online, image: Opencooper

Hiroshige's father, Gen'emon, was adopted into the family of Andō Jūemon, whom he succeeded as fire warden for the Yayosu Quay area.

Hiroshige went through several name changes as a youth: Jūemon, Tokubē, and Tetsuzō. He had three sisters, one of whom died when he was three. His mother died in early 1809, and his father followed later in the year, but not before handing his fire warden duties to his twelve-year-old son. He was charged with prevention of fires at Edo Castle, a duty that left him much leisure time.

Not long after his parents' deaths, perhaps at around fourteen, Hiroshige—then named Tokutarō— began painting. He sought the tutelage of Toyokuni of the Utagawa school, but Toyokuni had too many pupils to make room for him. A librarian introduced him instead to Toyohiro of the same school.

By 1812 Hiroshige was permitted to sign his works, which he did under the art name Hiroshige. He also studied the techniques of the well-established Kanō school, the nanga whose tradition began with the Chinese Southern School, and the realistic Shijō school, and likely the perspective techniques of Western art and uki-e.

Hiroshige's apprentice work included book illustrations and single-sheet ukiyo-e prints of female beauties (bijin-ga) and kabuki actors in the Utagawa style, sometimes signing them Ichiyūsai or, from 1832, Ichiryūsai. In 1823, he resigned his post as fire warden, though he still acted as an alternate. He declined an offer to succeed Toyohiro upon the master's death in 1828.

It was not until 1829–1830 that Hiroshige began to produce the landscapes he has come to be

The Plum Garden in Kameido

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/De_pruimenboomgaard_te_Kameido-Rijksmuseum_RP-P-1956-743.jpeg/235px-De_pruimenboomgaard_te_Kameido-Rijksmuseum_RP-P-1956-743.jpeg

Edo, print 30: The Plum Garden in Kameido, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo ISBN 9781956215212

known for, such as the Eight Views of Ōmi series. He also created an increasing number of bird and flower prints about this time. About 1831, his Ten Famous Places in the Eastern Capital appeared, and seem to bear the influence of Hokusai, whose popular landscape series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji had recently seen publication (ISBN 9781956215243).

An invitation to join an official procession to Kyoto in 1832 gave Hiroshige the opportunity to travel along the Tōkaidō route that linked the two capitals. He sketched the scenery along the way, and when he returned to Edo he produced the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, which contains some of his best-known prints.

Hiroshige built on the series' success by following it with others, such as the Illustrated Places of Naniwa (1834), Famous Places of Kyoto (1835), another Eight Views of Ōmi (1834). As he had never been west of Kyoto, Hiroshige-based his illustrations of Naniwa (modern Osaka) and Ōmi Province on pictures found in books and paintings.

Hiroshige's first wife helped finance his trips to sketch travel locations, in one instance selling

Suidō Bridge and the Surugadai Quarter

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/100_views_edo_063.jpg/226px-100_views_edo_063.jpg

Edo, print 63: Suidō Bridge and the Surugadai Quarter, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, ISBN 9781956215212

some of her clothing and ornamental combs. She died in October 1838, and Hiroshige remarried to Oyasu, sixteen years his junior, daughter of a farmer named Kaemon from Tōtōmi Province.

Around 1838 Hiroshige produced two series entitled Eight Views of the Edo Environs, each print accompanied by a humorous kyōka poem. The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō saw print between about 1835 and 1842, a joint production with Keisai Eisen, of which Hiroshige's share was forty-six of the seventy prints. Hiroshige produced 118 sheets for the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo over the last decade of his life, beginning about 1848.

Hiroshige lived in the barracks until the age of 43. Gen'emon and his wife died in 1809, when Hiroshige was 12 years old, just a few months after his father had passed the position on to him.

Although his duties as a fire-fighter were light, he never shirked these responsibilities, even after he entered training in Utagawa Toyohiro's studio. He eventually turned his firefighter position over to his brother, Tetsuzo, in 1823, who in turn passed on the duty to Hiroshige's son in 1832.

Sukiyagashi in the Eastern Capital

https://www.hiroshige.org.uk/36_Views_Mount_Fuji/Images/Fuji_1858_03_Toto_Sukiya-gashi.jpg

Thirty-six Views, print 3: Sukiyagashi in the Eastern Capital, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji 1858 ISBN 9781956215236

View of the Whirlpools at Awa

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Utagawa_Hiroshige_%281857%29_Awa_Naruto_no_fuukei.jpg/500px-Utagawa_Hiroshige_%281857%29_Awa_Naruto_no_fuukei.jpg

View of the Whirlpools at Awa triptych, 1857, part of the series "Snow, Moon and Flowers"

Hiroshige II was a young print artist, Chinpei Suzuki, who married Hiroshige's daughter, Otatsu. He was given the artist name of Shigenobu. Hiroshige intended to make Shigenobu his heir in all matters, and Shigenobu adopted the name Hiroshige after his master's death in 1858, and thus today is known as Hiroshige II. However, the marriage to Otatsu was troubled and in 1865 they separated. Otatsu was remarried to another former pupil of Hiroshige, Shigemasa, who appropriated the name of the lineage and today is known as Hiroshige III.

Suō Iwakuni

Hiroshige_II_Suō_Iwakuni.jpg

Hiroshige II, Suō Iwakuni Kintaikyō, 1859

From Hiroshige II´s series 100 Views of the Provinces.

『諸国名所百景 周防岩国錦帯橋』

The famous Kintai Bridge was built in 1673 and also known as the Brocade Sash Bridge. It was destroyed by a tidal wave in 1950, but rebuilt in 1953. In feudal times it could only be used by the samurai, the common people had to cross the river by boat. This brige is shown by many ukiyo-e artists.

Both Hiroshige II and Hiroshige III worked in a distinctive style based on that of Hiroshige, but neither achieved the level of success and recognition accorded to their master. Other students of Hiroshige I include Utagawa Shigemaru, Utagawa Shigekiyo, and Utagawa Hirokage.

In his declining years, Hiroshige still produced thousands of prints to meet the demand for his works, but few were as good as those of his early and middle periods. He never lived in financial comfort, even in old age. In no small part, his prolific output stemmed from the fact that